The Shadowy Horses

"Jesus," I breathed, as the sudden realization hit me. My heart surged painfully upwards and lodged beneath my collarbone as I spun to stare behind me at the innocently empty air. I put out a shaking hand, not really wanting to, but unable to stop myself... and touched nothing but warmth. With the back of my neck prickling, I wheeled and stretched my hand out searchingly. Into the cold, and back again.

I took a hasty backwards step, then thought how foolishly futile that was, and hugging my ribcage defensively I stopped and held my ground. Three months ago, if someone had tried to convince me I was facing down a ghost I would have laughed out loud at the very idea; now I had no doubt at all that he was there, directly in front of me, trying to touch me, perhaps; trying to talk to me ...

This has to stop, my mind cried silently. / can't keep on with this, it has to stop.

"I can't," I said aloud, in a raspy voice I hardly recognized as mine. Closing my eyes for a moment, I struggled to concentrate, and stammered out the words again in Latin. "I can't hear you. I'm sorry. I can't hear you or see you— the boy's the only one who can do that, and I can't use him because it does him harm. Do you understand?"

Only the silence answered me. I hugged myself tighter to ward off the shivers, my voice dwindling to a pleading sort of whisper. "Look, I know you want to tell me something, but you'll have to find another way ... this just won't work. Do you understand? You'll have to find another way ..."

"Miss Grey?" The living voice, close outside the doorway, made me jump.

I turned my head. "Yes?"

"You all right?" My student's head appeared around the corner for the second time, her expression wary. "We heard you talking, but we weren't sure whether you were saying something to us, or—"

"No," I told her, "sorry. I was talking to myself."

"Oh right." She paused a minute. "It's just that you sounded different, you know..."

"Yes, I imagine I would have." I forced a smile. "I was speaking Latin."

Her look made it clear she considered me strange—a fussy old bluestocking, maybe, or a plain raving idiot. But she withdrew again politely, saying nothing.

I drew a deep breath, took up my mug of tea with a trembling hand and dived with purpose through the doorway, out of the finds room, out of the Principia, crossing the field with swift steps that were just this side of an actual run.

David didn't notice anything amiss when I appeared at the edge of his barracks trench—but then he wouldn't have noticed, anyway. He was deeply, happily absorbed in the dirt, like a small boy with bucket and spade at the beach. "Heyah," he greeted me, his eyes crinkling against the wind. "You didn't have to do that."

"Do what?"

"Bring me tea."

"Oh. I didn't," I assured him, wrapping my hands more closely around the warmth. "It's my tea. But you're welcome to share it, if you like."

"I do like. Thanks." He prised the mug out of my fingers and drank, crouching back on his heels. "Wicked weather."

I nodded. "Having any luck?"

"Aye. We've cleared the outline of one of the barracks blocks—I've got the lads putting golf tees in all of the post molds so that Fabia can take a photograph before it rains."

"Yes, I see that. So what are you doing down here, with your trowel?''

He grinned. "Mucking about. I thought this looked interesting, this darker bit here, so I'm checking it out. You never ken what you'll find, on this blasted site. You can have this back now," he added, handing over the half-empty mug. "Thanks."

The dark head bent again and for a while I watched him work in silence, drawing comfort from his company, his quiet calming strength. I'm safe here with David, I thought, and the words became a lulling litany as I sipped the warm tea and relaxed: Safe, safe, perfectly safe ...

The cold passed through me like a knife blade, and I jerked upright. "David."

"It's all right," he said, in an excited tone, not looking up. "I see it."

I stared down at him, watching his motions without really seeing them, trying to focus on what he was doing. He had tossed his trowel aside and was brushing the dirt away now with his fingers, trying to free something small from the soil. And then he raised his head to whistle sharply across the trench, catching the attention of one of his students. "Go get Mr. Quinnell, lad.”

“David, what is it?" I leaned closer, trying to stop shaking. "What have you found?"

For an answer he held out his hand, and I saw the small medallion, the shred of a chain and the glitter of gold, and the tiny stamped figure of a woman, holding what looked like a ship's rudder.

"It's Fortuna," David told me.

"Yes, I know."

I'd come across her image countless times in my career— one of the first things I'd been asked to draw for Dr. Lazenby, on the Suffolk dig, had been an altar erected by some unnamed Roman soldier, inscribed "To Fortune, Who Brings Men Home." Those few words had moved me, and I'd wished that I could meet the man who'd had them carved in stone.

Be careful what you wish for, that's what my father always said. I ought to have listened to him. Because standing now and looking at the image of Fortuna, goddess of good luck and destiny, steering her ship of fate over the waters, I felt certain I'd already met the man to whom the golden pendant once belonged.